Categories

Categories are the rows of your budget. Every transaction belongs to one. Every month is the sum of its categories.

The three types

Savings is its own type so the dashboard can tell spending from moving money to where you want it later. The two are not the same.

Create or edit a category

1. Go to Categories.
2. Tap Add Category, or tap an existing one to edit.
3. Fill in:
   • Name and icon.
   • Type (income / expense / savings).
   • Amount — what the category is worth each month. Once the category exists this is owned by Amount History; the editor shows what's in effect and you change it by recording a dated change.
   • Recurrence (see below).
4. Save.

Recurrence

Recurrence tells the app how often the category appears.

• Monthly — every month. The default for most categories.
• Biweekly — every other week. Useful for paychecks on a biweekly schedule.
• Weekly — every week.
• Annual — once per year, on a specific month/day. The category appears on the dashboard only in months where it's active.
• One-off — appears only in the months you explicitly add it to.

For each recurring category you can set a start and end date — useful for, say, a 12-month gym membership.

Active months

Even on a monthly recurrence, a category can be made active only in certain months. Open the category and adjust the active months picker — handy for something like Holiday Gifts (active Nov + Dec only).

Bring a category back into a month

A seasonal or one-off category only shows up in the months it belongs to. When you need one outside its usual months — camp fees came due in August this year, the quarterly water bill landed early — add the category you already have rather than making a second one with the same name.

1. On the Dashboard, tap the + on the group you want it in (Income, Expenses, or Savings).
2. Choose Use an existing category and pick it from the list. Each one tells you why it isn't here on its own — out of season, quarterly, or one-off.
3. Enter an amount, or leave it blank to add it with nothing planned yet.

The row appears with an Added for {month} badge so you can tell it apart from the categories that live here every month. Nothing about the category itself changes — its recurrence, its active months, and its whole history stay exactly as they were, and it goes back to its normal schedule next month.

Why this matters: a duplicate category starts its history at zero. Spending Trends, the Lab, and every year-over-year comparison would then be reading half your numbers without saying so. Reusing the real category keeps all of it in one place.

To take it back out, open the category's settings (the gear on its Dashboard row; on a phone, tap the row and use the Manage tab) and choose Remove from {month}. If that month already has a planned amount or recorded spending, removal is switched off and Hide from {month} is offered instead — hiding keeps the numbers and the transactions; removing would take them off the dashboard.

Current amount vs. monthly planned amount

• Current amount is what the category is on today. The category editor shows it read-only, with the entry it came from underneath — and, if you have scheduled a change for a future date, a Next: line naming the new amount and when it starts.
• Monthly planned amount is the value actually used in a specific month. Edit it on the Dashboard.

You change the amount by recording an amount change, not by typing over a box. Amount History is the source of truth: it is what the budget reads for every month, and it is why you can look back and see what you were earning in March. There is no separate "current amount" to keep in sync — the number shown is simply the newest entry that has taken effect.

Months you haven't set by hand follow the history automatically. Past and current months aren't retroactively rewritten, and any month whose planned amount you edited directly stays locked at your value — see below for how to push a change into those locked months.

Amount schedules (raises, rate changes)

If a category's amount needs to change on a specific date — a salary bump on Aug 1, a rate increase — open the category, expand Amount History, and use Record Amount Change with the effective date. The new amount drives the budget from that month forward, and your earlier history is preserved.

A change dated in the future doesn't take effect yet, and the editor says so. Record a raise starting Aug 1 in June and the Current Amount keeps showing June's number, with Next: $X from Aug 1 beneath it. That's not a mistake — it's the point. The budget switches on its own when the date arrives.

A mid-month date starts the following month. A raise effective Mar 20 governs April onward, because a budget month can't be half at one rate. The exception is a category's very first entry, which always covers the month the category starts in.

The history reads as a table — date, note, amount, newest first — and the most recent entry is editable: hit the pencil beside it to correct the amount, the effective date, or the note. That is for fixing a mistake, not for recording a real change; a genuine new amount should be its own entry so the history stays an honest record. Older entries stay read-only, because changing one recomputes every month from its date onward.

Because BudgetLabs won't silently overwrite a month you set by hand, recording or correcting a change asks before touching locked months: if there are hand-set months on or after the effective date, you'll see "Apply this to N future months?". Choose Update them to recompute those months from the new amount — frequency-aware, so a bi-weekly income is multiplied by that month's paychecks — or Leave as-is to keep your manual values. Months you never touched always follow the latest amount automatically.

Default Split (recurring split rules)

If transactions assigned to this category should always split the same way — your phone bill is always 67% personal and 33% business, your AT&T charge is always partly your roommate's — set up a Default Split on the category instead of doing it manually each month.

1. Open the category and expand Default Split.
2. Pick a target category (e.g. Business Expenses) and the percent that should redirect there (e.g. 33).
3. Add as many target rows as you need. The header tells you what percent stays in this category vs. what's redirected.
4. Save.

When you add a transaction to this category — through the form, an import, or via Hank — a small "💡 This category has a default split — Apply" prompt appears. One tap fills the split section with your template values; you can still adjust before saving.

Templates are stored as percentages, not dollars, so they keep working when next month's bill is a different amount. A 33%-to-business rule still produces the right $103.30 split when the bill is $310 instead of $300.

Archive vs. delete

• Archive hides the category from the Dashboard but keeps every historical transaction intact. Recommended for almost every cleanup case.
• Delete is permanent and only available for categories that have never had a transaction.

When in doubt, archive.

What's next

• Auto-categorization rules — automatically tag imported transactions.
• The Lab — Insights — once you have a few months of categories logged, the Lab starts to show useful patterns.